Friday, September 26, 2008

Yes, even though we’re all buried in Spam, it’s still possible to make new business contacts online. The recent JV (Joint Venture) craze reflects the simple principle that in the end, people do business with PEOPLE – not with pixels, bits, and bytes.

Old fashioned networking is still alive and well online. And it’s the best method for getting some good exposure if you’re just starting out and have no money for marketing. By building strong business relationships, you’ll soon have other marketers offering to link to you, publish your articles, write about your site in their newsletter, and even offer you free advertising.

One of the best places to make business contacts in your field is in forums. For example, if you’ve started an affiliate web site that sells specialty dog training devices, hang out in the many dog-related forums and newsgroups.

But instead of trying to help end consumers so they’ll visit your site, make friends with experts in related fields. In this case pet sitters, groomers, dog trainers, veterinary assistants, and even animal behaviorists can all be excellent contacts.

As with all business networking, look for ways to help your colleagues. If they have their own site, offer them a link on yours. If they have an opt-in list, perhaps you can set up a special web page, and give them a rebate on any commissions you make. If they write their own articles, perhaps you can turn them into a mini-ebook and offer it to all your visitors.

And there’s no reason you can’t be proactive, and send an email to noncompetitors – or even competitors – whose sites you admire. You don’t have to consider every competitor your enemy. Simply look for opportunities to be helpful.

One easy way to help – provided you do it diplomatically – is to point out a problem on someone’s site or in their ezine. If you find a broken link or some other error, drop them a note. Most webmasters WANT to know if a link suddenly stops working or if their database is generating internal server errors.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Affiliate marketing has been around on the Web for quite sometime now, but I know a lot of affiliates who don't know much or even nothing about it.

Most of these people think that they can easily make a quick buck or two from affiliate programs. Well that's not the case. Now the question is can someone really make money with affiliate programs?

There are obviously many ways to make money online: Some simple, some quite complicated. Personally, I feel affiliate programs are a great way to reinforce your home business. Affiliates struggling to earn $150 a month often find it hard to believe that other people could possibly earn as much as $8,000 or even $80,000 to 100,000 a month in commissions.

In fact, such commissions do happen!

That is why, affiliate-marketing training is an important first step to becoming successful in affiliate marketing. And if you are looking to start your career as a successful affiliate marketer, it’s the only step you should be considering before you begin.

Now, anybody would like to be more successful in Affiliate Marketing

Then the first step is to get hold of some Free Affiliate Marketing Courses. You can get them at the below link

These courses are not just for beginner's. Even if you have been involved in affiliate programs for some time, you will benefit greatly from these courses.

You can use it to either start an affiliate marketing business, or use it to learn the essentials of online marketing, or how to start a web based internet home business that can earn you substantial income.

Equipped with these basics, I reckon you more or less have the theoretical side to affiliate marketing in your hands. What remains is the practical side and that is something no one can teach you - you got to learn it by yourself!

Those big companies with deep pockets use mass media ads to create indelible name recognition in the public’s mind. After branding their company into our consciousness, they use direct mail techniques such as postcard mailings to send offers to hand-picked prospects who are most likely to make a purchase soon.

It’s strange, but very few online marketers have discovered the power of direct mail. A handful have learned to use classified advertising – the distant cousin of expensive mass media advertising. But almost none are using other forms of offline ads. This can also give you an enormous edge.

If you make your living from affiliate programs and related upsells, you can bet that your competition isn’t doing any sort of offline advertising If you think offline advertising is too expensive, think again. Because PPC has become so popular, the cost of high quality online advertising is rising dramatically. It’s common for a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign in a competitive field to cost $1 or more per click – sometimes much more. And you don’t even know if those clicks are coming from real prospects or your competitors’ itchyfingers.

In fact, today PPC can actually end up costing as much, or more, than direct mail on a cost per sale basis. So do the math before you write off direct mail. A mailing of custom color postcards, for example, can definitely cost less than $3 each to print and mail, and that includes the mailing list.

More importantly, you must think about your projected COST PER SALE when comparing PPC and direct mail. Clicks may be cheap, but customers may not. All traffic – whether targeted or not – is made up of people. If these “clickers” are unlikely to be buyers, you’ll lose money on PPC no matter how cheap the clicks are.

For highly competitive keywords you can easily end up paying over $3 per click if you want to be on the first page of Google. If you stop and consider WHO you’re selling to, the direct mail campaign may be a better investment. You can target exactly the sort of person you want, with just the right demographics, and tell them to go to your site where you’ll show them an irresistible offer.

What about classifieds?

With classified print advertising, you can advertise your URL in literally hundreds of small daily newspapers for ridiculously small amounts per ad. And classified ads in major national niche magazines can be very affordable – and usually pull extremely well.

These days, television ads may not even be out of your reach. If you enjoy the spotlight, you can purchase "leased access" time on local U.S. cable television. By Federal Law, every local cable station must allow the general public to purchase time on their channel, in blocks of 30 minutes. Since the costs are also controlled by law, even in large metropolitan areas a 30 minute segment may cost as little as $200.

These days, $200 won’t buy you much PPC in a competitive field like mortgages or debt management. You don’t even have to be selling to a local market to make a television segment pay. As long as you’ve got an easy-to-remember URL, put a special television offer page on your site.

Then offer a high value upsell free to the first 20 people who respond to the “TV special.”

Finally, don’t forget other incredibly simple offline methods of getting your URL out there. Instead of a traditional business card, print several thousand with your URL in huge letters and leave them anywhere relevant. Don’t forget pencils and pens, letter openers and coasters, calendars and T-shirts…

Remember, you don’t need a bricks and mortar location to use offline advertising.

Amazon, Gateway, Dell, AOL, and many other online businesses spend millions on offline promotional methods. That’s what’s made their brands and URLs famous.

You can do the same on a much smaller scale. It’s a big offline world.

Plenty of people spend more time offline and on. Open your mind to using offlinemarketing to get your message in front of the RIGHT people. That way you can get your URL in front of targeted prospects. And when they visit your site, they’ve actually made a conscious decision to do so.